Jim Carson

How You Can Help: To donate or volunteer, go to orangewoodfoundation.org. Or go to 1575 E. 17th St., Santa Ana, CA 92705. Call 714-619-0200 or email info@orangewoodfoundation.org.

Jim Carson always answers his phone. Doesn’t matter the hour, where he is or what he’s doing; that phone is not more than a few feet from him. He also makes sure his car always has gas.Because all too often the calls Carson takes – any time, anywhere – are pleas for help.

Jim, I’m at the Motel 6. Come pick me up because I think he’s going to kill me.

Jim, I can’t do this anymore. Take me to an AA meeting.

Jim, I can’t take care of my baby ...

“My phone is a hotline,” says Carson, who for the past 20 years has been program manager of Rising Tide at the Orangewood Children’s Foundation.

He runs a transitional housing program for kids who have aged out of the foster care program, and who mostly have nowhere to go and no one to turn to who doesn’t want something from them.

The work led him to become involved in the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, where he works to get victims of the sex trade out of “the life,” as they call it.

The life being a hell of prostitution, abuse, drug addiction, homelessness. Those in the life all too often are kids or young adults who have come through the foster care system.

In January, Carson, 66, technically retired. All that meant was that his role at Orangewood switched from employee to volunteer – and that he’d pay his bills with his retirement income. The every-waking-moment-helping-kids-however-he-can part of his life – that all stayed the same.

“I’ve never worked a day in my life. What I do is my life.” Carson shrugs. “I’m blessed.”

A tall, rangy guy, Carson still walks at a New York clip, even though he’s lived most of his adult life in California. He heads down a hall like he’s racing to a fire.

Maybe because, in a larger sense, he is.

The statistics on these kids are so grim, it’s enough to make you throw up your hands. Consider these numbers from the Orangewood Children’s Foundation:

• 46 percent don’t get a high school degree (vs. 16 percent for the general population).

• 65 percent transition into adulthood without a place to live.

• 51 percent are unemployed within two to four years of emancipation.

• 70 percent of all state prison inmates once were in foster care.

But Carson looks beyond statistics.

He looks at faces, the smiling ones in the photographs pinned to his workstation cubicle. He remembers names – hundreds.

He recalls the times he has walked them down the aisle. Bought Christmas presents for babies. Attended graduations.

Carson might be the father to only one biological son but, he says, spreading his arms wide in Orangewood’s large conference room, “my family is as big as this room.”

But Carson also has attended their funerals. And he has been a safe harbor for young women coming in out of the sex trade – only to have them return to the pimps who put them on the street.

“When they are ready to change, I’ll be here. I might have to drive a girl back to her pimp nine times – these guys have such a hold on these girls, people don’t understand. But maybe, on the 10th time, it’ll stick.”

Sometimes it does.

“The one thing people need to know is how Jim is a hero to most of us,” says Oree Freeman, 18, who was just 13 and “in the life” when she met Carson.

“He is there, no matter what. For most of us who grew up like this, and in foster care, consistency in your life is something you don’t know. He is there with open arms, at 2 or 3 in the morning, whenever you need.

“The core of him is so real and honest. ... Jim just gets it.”

He does get it, maybe more than the kids realize.

Carson says he came from a “crappy” home life, experiencing some of the same instability and difficulties faced by the foster kids. He remembers, as a kid, feeling a deep calling to serve others. He thought he would become a priest.

“But – and I don’t mean this as offense to anyone – Catholic school beat that out of me,” Carson says.

“I didn’t think you could be a priest if you’d lost faith in God.”

As a teen, he was given a choice of going into jail or the military, so he chose the latter. When he got out, he eventually ended up in Tustin. He was a long-haired hippie for a while. “Let’s just say I experienced the ’60s, and leave it at that,” he says laughing.

Along the way, he learned that who you were doesn’t define who you will become. After a turn as a professional racquetball player, he became a successful sports promoter. His son earned admission into UC Berkeley.

“I think for any good parent, your life naturally revolves around your children.”

But once his son was out the door, in college, Carson says, it was as if he raised his head out of the sand, looked around, and said, “What do I really want to do with my life?”

He knew the answer: help kids.

That’s when he caught on at Rising Tide, selling his home in Irvine to be a live-in manager in the transitional housing facility.

“I’m not wired to be able to go halfway into anything.”

He lobbied Orangewood management to start accepting youth who have children, because so few housing resources exist for them.

Now, in retirement, he dreams of creating more housing for the kids transitioning out of foster care. He also is beginning monthly, community educational seminars at Orangewood to offer insight not only into foster care issues but solutions.

Carson doesn’t talk a lot about what foster kids need, though. He talks instead about what they have given him – a sense of the divine.

“They are so strong. They have taught me humility.

“And they have given me the opportunity to be the kind of person I always wanted to be.”

Edith Sandoval of Garden Grove, center, hugs friend Oree Freeman of Orange and mentor Jim Carson of Orangewood Children's Foundation. "I leap out of bed every day," Carson says. "I love my job." CINDY YAMANAKA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Carson, right, encouraged Freeman to make a better life for herself. "He's the closest thing a lost girl can have to a father," Freeman says. CINDY YAMANAKA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Oree Freeman, 18, of Orange, gives her mentor and friend Jim Carson, 66, a hard time about his wardrobe. She threatens to take him to WalMart where she works and help him become more fashionable. "He loves me without any motive. It's pure and he's always there for me," Freeman says of the Rising Tide community coordinator for Orangewood Children's Foundation. CINDY YAMANAKA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Growing up, Jim Carson wanted to be a priest. Today the Rising Tide community coordinator for Orangewood Children's Foundation says he's still fulfilling his dream of serving people. The successful sports promoter was raised in a dysfunctional family and always wanted to help others. He doesn't consider his job work. CINDY YAMANAKA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Carson is a father figure to countless children and young adults. CINDY YAMANAKA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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